


Paper Doll

by tripwirealarm



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:03:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripwirealarm/pseuds/tripwirealarm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette.  "Something about her feels imaginary, so at first she thinks he’s just made her up, like some kind of excuse.  Even the name Rose feels idealized, like a model someone would make of a woman..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Doll

Something about her feels imaginary, so at first she thinks he’s just made her up, like some kind of excuse.  Even the name  _Rose_  feels idealized, like a model someone would make of a woman, a paper doll of flower scented parchment because what’s haunting the Doctor couldn’t be a  _person_  person, not a physical one with breakable bones and skin that can be cut and bruised, not something alive that doesn’t burn forever like a star.  Especially because the more she pries, the more he claps shut like a clam, changes the subject, takes too long to reply—the way someone does when caught in a lie.

Martha thinks that for awhile.  That she’s a story.  She’s the Doctor’s mythology; and she can’t compete with an idea but every day she tries.

What the point would be in that—inventing Rose—she’s not certain, not at first, but seeing things as the Doctor does is not something she excels at.  Once, she’d thought, it was some sort of means to politely express his romantic disinterest, if he seemed at all cognizant of the fact she  _is_ interested, or the necessity to be polite about showing her that  _he_  is not.  The Doctor knows so much about so much, even humanity, but it’s the little things that give him the slip.

She’s with him about a month when she finds it: an old Polaroid.  The kind she used to take with her friends at middle school sleepovers, the kind you’d flap back and forth after it rolled loudly out of the camera as though it needed drying.  It’s not a thing she’d expect to find in a timeship, although, she reconsiders, probably it should be exactly the kind of thing she should expect to find in a timeship: captured moments.  That, and the fact that she hasn’t seen Polaroid film in a shop for years.

It’s face down in a book in the library, one he’s left out on a tabletop with the white scrap poking from its top.  Martha can’t find any reason not to look, it’s left there in the open, a book about Werewolf lore of all things, leather bound with crisp pages that feel old between her fingertips in just the way they bend and slip.  It’s old the way anything on this ship can be old, which is to say, both very and not at all.  He could have picked it up yesterday or a hundred years before and the effect would be the same.

What doesn’t belong in the book is a face down Polaroid of a blonde in denim overalls and boots, grinning bright enough that she’s like the sun coming out.  Her toes are turned in, she’s pitched slightly forward, knees bent, frozen in laughter the way she looks built to be.  Her face in the photo, it’s the kind of face you make when it’s someone you love behind the camera. It’s her own face on a long-past birthday morning with all those paper packages and star shaped bows, everything dripping with coiled ribbon. It’s Tish’s face posing at her graduation, Leo’s at the birth of his daughter.  Here is a moment, floating like an island in the ocean of a long life.  That’s what she is looking at; something that almost makes Martha’s eyes turn away on reflex because she’s intruding on something that feels inexplicably intimate. It’s why he’s kept it in a book, face down against an old illustration of a star falling from the sky, away from everything like something precious in a bell jar.

Here is a moment that lasts forever.  The way people don’t.  The way nothing does.  (The way this didn’t.)

For no reason, she doesn’t have to be told that this is Rose.  And this photo, this is everything the Doctor is quietly mourning when it takes him too long to reply, when he slams shut like a door. This is what he’d meant when he said  _together_.

And maybe she wasn’t wrong when she’d decided Rose had to be made of paper.  Because she’s gone now, and this is all that’s left.  An idea.  Mythology.  

Something that can live forever; something that can never disappoint.

There are footsteps on the grated corridor, and the Poloroid goes back into the book, the book back on the desktop. Martha’s just opened a tome on bees when he rounds the corner, buttoning his brown jacket with his spidery fingers.

"Cardiff!" He announces with a flourish, flashing an all-teeth smile that as always looks just a little put-on; like he has to smile or he’d scream—but even that would be too honest.  Sometimes Martha wonders what he’d be doing if she wasn’t here.

She thinks maybe it’s a good thing she’ll never know.  That picture isn’t the only thing he hides, away from where anyone might see.  


End file.
